'Trump will be supportive of Quad and ties with India'

US president-elect Donald Trump is expected to be supportive of both the bilateral relationship with India and the Quad amid continuing contestation with China, leading American columnist and academic Walter Russell Mead said on Saturday.

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While trade relations could be an issue in the next Trump presidency, his protectionist instincts are geared more towards manufactured goods such as steel and cars than digital issues and technology that have greater importance in the India-US economic relationship, Mead said during a conversation with Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, South Asia head, Eurasia Group, at the 22nd Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.

Mead, who is Ravenel B Curry III Distinguished Fellow in Strategy and Statesmanship at Hudson Institute, and a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, said the area in US foreign policy with the greatest degree of bipartisan consensus is on Indo-Pacific policy.

"That would mean both India and China. I think Trump will be supportive of the Quad, I think he'll be very supportive of the relationship with India. India is not asking the US for military guarantees, India pays for its own defence budget. So in all those respects, India is much more the kind of associate power that Trump would be looking for," he said.